Delate Wawa

The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it.

Be brave.

– Buffy the Vampire Slayer


(Photo of young Iranians standing against the forces of autocracy courtesy of Samoel Safaie and Wikimedia Commons.)

Street Level Zen: Alienation

"How badly people want to talk to someone. They cannot make anyone hear them unless they scream, but they seldom really scream. Instead, they put letters in bottles and throw them into the sea of strangers, and the letters always seem to say, 'Save me, save me'."

Peter S. Beagle


(Photo courtesy of Šarūnas Burdulis and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Eight Worldly Dharmas

It just struck me that I've never posted on these before. Which is remarkable, since they're central to my practice, and indeed my life.

Also, since August is "Suicide Month" on Rusty Ring – the time when, for arbitrary reasons, I've ended up addressing that phenomenon most years – this is a good time to bring up the subject. Because suicide is the result of alienation, even though, as the Dharmas demonstrate, we're not alien.

Just dumb.

The Eight Worldly Dharmas (also called Preoccupations, Distractions, Desires, Concerns, Conditions, Winds, or Things I Do Instead of Zen) is a catalogue of 8 human constants that obscure the Path. (Or 4, to be precise, and their equally unproductive opposites – which together represent subsidiary principles of the Middle Way.)

I've had no luck determining the origin of this teaching. Today it passes for Buddhist, but feels like insight that predates us. I don't suppose it matters, but if we've jumped someone else's copyright… deep bow.

Anyway, here, for the first time on our stage, are the Eight Worldly Dharmas:

Wanting to get things
Not wanting to lose things

Wanting to be happy
Not wanting to be unhappy

Wanting acknowledgement
Not wanting to be overlooked

Wanting approval
Not wanting blame

That's my personal stock. Ask in a year and some wording may have changed.

There are other inventories on the Enlightenment Superpath:

1).
getting things you want/avoiding things you do not want
wanting happiness/not wanting misery
wanting fame/not wanting to be unknown
wanting praise/not wanting blame

2).
acquiring material things or not acquiring them
interesting or uninteresting sounds
praise or criticism
happiness or unhappiness

3).
benefit and decrease
ill repute and good repute
blame and praise
suffering and happiness

As you can see there is considerable variation in tone and imagery, but the thrust is consistent. (By the way, "interesting or uninteresting sounds" may sound like a weird phobia, but there's a lot of this sort of thing in the basal Buddhist texts. Random draughts, unethically-high beds, off-putting smells… not the stuff of existential angst, but you're supposed to meditate on it until you grasp the root of the problem. In this case, the writer is saying that we obsess over contextual conditions beyond our control – hot or cold, loved or alone, putting up with rude jerks or being left in peace. Your neighbours playing the Beatles on their stereo, or Slim Whitman. Pick your hell.)

And to be perfectly pedantic, when it comes right down to it, there are really only 2 Worldly Dharmas (split in half, as before):

Getting stuff you like
Not getting stuff you like

Avoiding stuff you don't like
Getting stuff you don't like

But I guess the Ancestors figured you couldn't get a self-help book out of that. For starters, it's too easily memorised.

Any road, this practice is explosive for me. The attitudes of others have played an inordinate role in my sense of self and worth, and if you study the Dharmas carefully, you'll see that they're mostly about that: stuff others give or withhold. The remainder – natural phenomena, like cold in your room or the infirmity of age – is similarly not the fundamental problem.

Not that any of these are trivial, mind you. Irrelevant and unimportant are not the same. But being aware of what originates in your skull restores a whopping measure of control.

Because suffering is actually two emergencies: suffering, and fear of suffering. And of the two, the second causes the most pain.

Doesn't mean the first isn't unpleasant, too. Just that it's not what manipulates you.

But you have influence over that second one.

And that's what the Eight Worldly Dharmas encapsulate: that stuff going on outside you, beyond your control, twangs your desires, and that's what plays you. Stop caring, and the monster is defanged.

And you get to that place by looking deeply. Doesn't happen instantly, but keep at it and you'll be amazed how far not striving will take you. And the more you observe the results, the dumber your desires look.

And the dumber they look, the smarter you become.

And there's not a damn thing anything outside you can do about it.

So that's why I meditate – or just reflect – on one or all of the Eight Worldly Dharmas on a regular basis. Maybe change things up from time to time and contemplate a different inventory.

Because it's about time my demons caught a few worldly dharmas of their own.


(Photo of Narcissus var. 'Slim Whitman' [yes, really] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Good Video: Suic!de and Ment@l He@lth by Oliver Thorn

As I've mentioned in past years, August has by a series of dependent co-arising become Suicide Month here on Rusty Ring. Along with depression, isolation, and alienation, it's a topic I often contemplate, as being an epidemic our culture both militantly ignores and wilfully misattributes. (That is, refuses to take full responsibility for.)

So, this being August, and a sangha sister having some time ago alerted me to his worthwhile and relevant talent, I rate it time to introduce readers not yet privy to my man Oliver Thorn.

Olly, as his legion of fans call him, has earned a legion of fans through his Philosophy Tube channel on YouTube. I suspect I'm not alone in appreciating his steady, well-informed leftist responses to the rightwing conventional wisdom of our era. Olly's commentary is better than balanced; it's rational, amiably sardonic, and self-mocking.

And I never trust a person who trusts himself.

Also – big surprise – it turns out Olly has a history of suicidal tendencies. Because the dumb and brutal don't suffer from that. Which tells you most of what you need to know about that responsibility I mentioned above.

Olly's admirers learned about his relationship with despair something less than a year ago, when he uploaded the above video. The man's raw courage is breath-taking, and while this particular post bears little witness to the research and humour that's earned him his rabid (and apparently largely male) following, I suspect I'm not alone in considering it one of his best.

If you've had suicidal tendencies, or someone you care about does, by all means treat yourself to Oliver Thorn's globally public self-interrogation.

Which is all of you. So hop to it.

For the rest, bear in mind Robin's Rule of Reason: "Killing yourself because everyone else is crazy is unskilful."

Everyone

Everyone has a room to air.
Everyone has a soul to bare.
Everyone has a horn to blare.
Everyone has a cause to care.
Everyone has a task to chair.
Everyone has a doubt to dare.
Everyone has a bent to err.
Everyone has a hull to fair.
Everyone has a flame to flare.
Everyone has a growl to glare.
Everyone has a hound to hare.
Everyone has a glove to pair.
Everyone has a call to prayer.
Everyone has a chance too rare.
Everyone has a crow to scare.
Everyone has a song to share.
Everyone has a snipe to snare.
Everyone has a coin to spare.
Everyone has a debt to square.
Everyone has a scowl to stare.
Everyone has an oath to swear.
Everyone has a page to tear.
Everyone has a road to there.
Everyone has a robe to wear.

(Photo of Fuke Zen monk courtesy of Urashima Taro and Wikimedia Commons.)

Update on Christopher Knight, "The North Pond Hermit"

It's been a busy few weeks for the backlist. First, the passing of Robin Williams led to a run on my review of The Zen Path Through Depression. Then my article on Christopher Knight – "The North Pond Hermit" – trended as well. A quick Google search revealed that GQ had recently published an in-depth story about him.

The Strange And Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit is a remarkably sensitive and balanced account by Michael Finkel, the first journalist to win Christopher's trust… or at least enough of it to permit him to write a well-developed article. Reading it, I had the following thoughts:

o Apparently, Christopher really did live year-round in the Maine woods – in a tent, with no fire – for 27 years. I was not alone in doubting this part of his story; I've lived in Québec, and it's frankly difficult for me to imagine surviving even one night in the depths of that winter. In fairness, Christopher himself admits that even he barely did, sometimes. His greatest strength seems to be iron discipline, sticking to rigid protocols that allowed him, day after day, to meet critical challenges. My hat is off to him; I could never be so consistent for so long.

o As earlier accounts reported, Christopher possessed no firearms and offered no resistance when arrested. (Which didn't happen in his own camp, as I first believed, but at gunpoint, while burglarising a cabin.)

o I also predicted that we would soon learn troubling details about his saga, but this too has proven overly cynical. Though much of his past remains blank, everything released so far checks out. He really does seem to be nothing more than a guy who walked into the woods one day. (And who refuses to discuss his motivations for it.)

o He talks like the real thing. "More damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in [seven] months," he says, "than years, decades, in the woods." As a forest monk, I have no trouble believing that. And he has clear insight into his fate: "I stole. I was a thief. I repeatedly stole over many years. I knew it was wrong. Knew it was wrong, felt guilty about it every time, yet continued to do it." Believable perspective from a man who has been living in solitude; denial is a disease of the gregarious.

o It's interesting to note that in the woods he was always carefully groomed, but stopped shaving in jail. I also was more fastidious about my appearance on the mountain, in part to avoid attracting the attention of possible onlookers. Christopher claims his bushy, unkempt jail beard was a calendar; otherwise he had no way, in that barren, sterile environment, to gauge the passage of time. Again, credible.

o As it happens, he did meditate, but only when in danger. It worked, too: "I am alive and sane, at least I think I'm sane." But in spite of the article's title, Christopher isn't a true hermit. "When I came out of the woods they applied the label hermit to me," he told Finkel. "Then I got worried. For I knew with the label hermit comes the idea of crazy." (An impression that is totally accurate.) He was in fact a recluse: a person who lives in isolation for non-spiritual reasons.

o Mental health examiners suggest that Christopher may have Asperger's syndrome. Speaking as someone with close experience of this condition (think Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory), it's plausible. He was often cold, unresponsive, and impatient with Finkel; he sometimes voiced a high opinion of himself and disparaged perceived rivals – even famous confrère Henry David Thoreau – in adolescent terms. Tics not likely produced by three decades of solitude, which tends on the contrary to make difficult people (such as me) more friendly, loving, and mindful of others' worth.

o Another detail that may be counter-intuitional to the inexperienced: his camp turned out to be almost within sight of a cabin; isolation and distance are not always synonymous. He lived in a state of camouflage, just as I planned to do when I thought I'd have to sit my 100 Days on public land. The best defence is not to be seen in the first place.

o His difficulties with advancing age also ring true. He complained of the growing hardship of a lifestyle tailored to a man in his twenties, and shared my battle with failing eyesight, which he partially solved the same way: "I used my ears more than my eyes."

o Finally, and most fascinating, he did in fact gain profound existential insight out there, even though he wasn't a contemplative. "Solitude did increase my perception," he told Finkel. "But […] when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. […] To put it romantically: I was completely free." That's pretty much what happened to me, too. Interesting that Zen training apparently wasn't necessary – though it did get me there a few hundred months sooner.

Ultimately, my conviction that Christopher's story is essentially accurate as he reports it boils down to the following "Wisdom To Live By", surrendered at last to his chronicler after repeated pestering:

"Get enough sleep."

I learned the same thing, Out There.


UPDATE, 21 April 2015: The Lena Friedrich documentary on Christopher, formerly known as Hermythology, is now called The Hermit and has a Facebook page.

UPDATE, 7 July 2015: Christopher was released on parole in March. News releases quote both his attorney and the judge who decided his case as expressing confidence that he will transition smoothly back to civil life. Details here.

UPDATE, 8 March 2017: Finkel has just come out with a book about Christopher, entitled The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story Of The Last True Hermit. (Even though, as I've explained, Christopher was not in fact a true hermit.) I haven't read this book yet.

UPDATE, 15 April 2020: Lena Friedrich has made her Christopher Knight documentary available free on Vimeo.

(Photo of the Maine camp country courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Robin Williams and Atonement

I've purposely held off posting about Robin Williams until the tidal wave of pro forma anguish washed past and left us in a place of calm. I'll give the media this: this time the coverage wasn't schlocky and over-the-top. Which is good, because the man deserves better.

But given the way he went, and the fact that August has somehow become Suicide Month here at Rusty Ring, I've got stuff to say.

First off, Robin Williams was a crucial figure to my generation. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere – not surprising, given that those of us who followed the Baby Boomers have always been studiously ignored. But Robin Williams was, to some extent, our John Lennon. The fact that he was apolitical suited us perfectly; so were we. His lightning genius was dazzling, his sword scalpel-sharp, though he never seemed to over-use it. He took down the officious and precious, but never harped or dwelled. In nearly every photograph a childlike gentleness glows in his eyes. He wasn't angry; he was self-mocking. In him we saw perhaps not ourselves, but what we wished we could be. And on a personal note, as a kid of Scottish descent growing up in the States, I'll be eternally grateful to him for finally convincing the Yanks that Robin IS TOO a boys' name. (Haven't been hassled about that since Mork.)

None of which I realised until he was gone. Sic transit gloria mindfulness practice.

With his passing, my man Robin also brought depression to international attention, resulting in myriad thoughtful, helpful articles about the relationship between creativity, damage, and loneliness. Last week my 2011 review of The Zen Path Through Depression trended worldwide, attracting hundreds of hits. So people are interested in the topic, and with luck some who need counsel are seeking it.

But one thing I haven't seen is any discussion of the collective responsibility for the condition and its consequences. Some time ago I read a study in which researchers assembled a group of depression patients and another of random others. Researchers gave each individual a series of open-ended true stories and asked them to predict the outcome. The depressed subjects consistently augured more accurately than those in the control group.

Get it? Another word for depression is insight. Often, depressed people suffer in part from the misfortune of not being as mentally incapacitated by denial as their cohorts. The implication is clear: at least some of depression isn't sickness at all; it's a tragic lack of sickness, in a world gone barking mad.

Last year I uploaded a piece partly addressing the issue of how to deal with such unfashionable insight, should you be so afflicted; suffice it to say that killing yourself because everyone else is crazy is unskilful, both for yourself and the world. But like Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Those who think they are not responsible are the most responsible." Therefore, today I'm talking especially to the non-depressed majority.

What can you do to reduce the suicide rate?

The standard Zen response is to be mindful of the seeds of violence in yourself and deny them water. Some of the best instruction in this highly effective practice is found in Claude Anshin Thomas's autobiography At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace. In the meantime, here's a short list of possible first steps:

• If you belong to a church or other religious organisation that identifies any group of fellow mortals ("Satanists"; atheists; gays; intellectuals; competing religions) as individuals who must be "stopped"; converted by physical or social violence; or liquidated; leave it. 

• If you belong to a political party or movement that ascribes the problems we face to some superficially-defined group of people (immigrants; gays; rich or poor people; criminals; another race; proponents of a political or economic theory; another nation); leave it. 

• Boycott anger-tainment – shock jocks, call-in shows, intentionally biased networks, sensationalistic books and movies. Anything that's heavy on analysis and light on facts. Don't forget the red tops, too. The constant public shaming of Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse (who apparently still isn't dead enough), or whatever other none-of-your-business train-wreck is selling at the moment, dehumanises us more than you think.

• Too ambitious? Ok, just declare peace on somebody. Your choice. Choose one group that annoys the crap out of you and say, "From now on, you have my permission to be or do that." Slow drivers? Fast drivers? Loud children? People who use bad grammar? Obscenities? Residents of big garish houses? Those who dump their shopping trolleys in the car park for someone else to round up? (Ooo, that's mine!) 

Note that none of these are solutions to any problem, suicide least of all; rather they're a way to begin clearing the ground so solutions can develop. Maybe now that those self-centred bastards who strew their carts all over the place are no longer prompting a battle response, I will see the cause and effect behind their actions and perceive an end to it. Worst case scenario: I'll stop squandering my finite human energies on unproductive suffering. (Starting with my own.)

Once you start, it becomes addictive, this business of reason, acceptance, and forgiveness.

So go ahead, brothers and sisters: take that first step. See how it goes.

Until next time, honoured reader: Nanu-nanu.

(Still of Robin being human from the Bill Forsythe film of that title.)

Suicide: The Cure

A year ago this month the suicide of a former student prompted me to get real on polite society's fancy backside and name the actual perpetrators of suicide, right out loud. I ended with a direct request that they knock it the hell off.

You'd think that would do it, but here we are a whole year later and my demands still haven't been met. So while we're waiting, here's a tip on how not to be their victim.

As I pointed out then, suicide happens because the culture refuses to admit that life sucks. This leads people to desperate measures to escape the deep loneliness of being the only hurting person in the world. How did they reach this improbable conclusion? Because they were lied to about the pie.

Stay with me, here. All of your life, The Consensus (aka society, "the world", people, the public, The Man, The Matrix, "they", the culture…) has force-fed you a definition of happiness based on others' acceptance: equal parts companionship (for which you must beg peers) and material success (for which you must beg The Man: teachers, the market, employers, etc.) Let's be clear: you didn't come up with this definition, and (o thunderous coincidence) you can't get either of its two requirements by yourself. The approval you need to buy Consensus-brand happiness is only sold by The Consensus.

If this sounds like some kind of dystopian sci-fi hell, welcome home. I call it "the pie". Because I love lemon pie. There isn't much I wouldn't do for lemon pie. Make that: there didn't used to be much I wouldn’t do.

Dig:

The universe is a giant dessert table. It's got every dessert ever invented, plus millions more not yet invented. But you've been told that the onliest dessert worth having is the lemon pie.

Yeah. That's likely.

And – what are the odds?? – lemon pie is also the only one you have to ask for. You could grab literally tonnes of others, FOB. But Consensus says the lemon pie is "the only true happiness". And you literally have to sell your soul (to The Consensus) to get it. What’s more, The Consensus gets to decide if it even wants your soul. Which it often doesn't. In which case you're screwed. For life.

Unless you take the trifle. Or the cobbler. Or the fruit plate. Or the beavertail. Or any one of a billion other happinesses The Consensus insists aren't even there. Every one shouting "Bite me!" (Get it?)

Enough about the pie. Listen. Some people never find a wife or husband. (And lots more do and wish they didn't.) Some never make a comfortable living. Many never attain social acclaim, whether by choice or default. Literally millions of us never get lemon pie… I mean, "success". And we're doing just fine, out here with the dogs. It's not that Consensus-endorsed happiness isn't good. It's just not better than the others.

I have close friends in (apparently) ideal marriages and/or careers. They have problems, challenges, compromises, regrets. Things are missing from their lives. I have others that have neither love nor status. Some wanted them dearly, once. (I sure did.) But it didn't happen, so we cultivated other happinesses. And we're as fulfilled as the pie-eaters.

In sum:

1. WE suffer because we don't have their happiness.
2. THEY suffer because they don't have ours.

––––> Balance: there is no pie.

In adolescence, the contradiction between pompous promises and bedrock hypocrisy comes into stark relief. As their souls come online, lots of young people find themselves at the wrong end of the table. They don't date well. God didn't make them mathematicians. They aren't reassured by conventional copouts. They like weird music, clothes, books, movies. They're too sensitive. Too visionary. Too intelligent. Too gay. And the suicide begins.

But here's the thing: you don't have to play. When I meditate (you knew it was coming; does this look like a fashion blog?) I clear my mind, shut up the critics– including the one I was trained to be – and walk right past the pie. No more starving navel-deep in food. When you cultivate inner silence, truth finally gets a word in edgewise. Suddenly sunsets and rivers and flowers and wildlife are blindingly awesome; a provocative book, a road trip, a cup of really fine chai; the drum of the surf, the om of a city; a song, a joke, the utter indifference of Time itself. That's the real world. And it's infinitely bigger than people.

They tell you not to settle for that. I just go ahead and settle for it. And you'd be astonished how unhappy it doesn't make me. I'm still sad sometimes; lonely, especially. I have regrets and misgivings, fear and anger, roads I wish I'd taken, roads I wish I'd never seen. In short, I'm living exactly the same life as the pie-eaters. It's just that now, it's devoted to ending suffering. (Trade secret: start with your own.)

Word up to all my world-weary brothers and sisters. No time for small minds. Eyes on the prize.

(But why am I so hungry all of a sudden?)


(Photo of Bunter Teller (27 Stücke) im Tortenkarton courtesy of Hedwig Storch and Wikimedia Commons.)

Christopher Knight: The "North Pond Hermit"

(See my August 2014 update on Christopher here.)

Last week a man the press described as a "hermit" was arrested in Maine. As usual, the coverage was Swiss-cheesed with hanging references, and much of the rest played to stereotypes and sentiment. After concerted research, there are still great gaps in my picture of events.

But as far as I can tell, Christopher Knight is not a hermit (that is, a person who withdraws from society for spiritual ends). He appears instead to be a recluse. I did find, in a single article, a mention of meditation, without elaboration. Aside from that, all that's clear is that Christopher lived under a tarp in the forest, for a long time. I question whether he did so for the 27 straight years he claims; there are significant holes there, too.

He survived in the bush by stealing from shuttered summer cabins. Thus, many are furious with him. Fair enough; anyone who's been burgled will tell you the damage goes much deeper than the simple cost of the goods. But as an actual hermit, I can imagine the thought process that might lead an otherwise inoffensive solitary to such a decision, especially if he's been alone a long time. Removed from human influence, you start to be shaped by other moralities. That's why we do it.

However, if he isn't a fair-dinkum hermit, Christopher may at least lean that way. Even his victims admit he mostly stole the wherewithal of life: food, fuel, bedding, batteries. He walked right past money and valuables, damaged as little as possible, and even locked up when he left. And I found a single unsupported suggestion that he left things. Payment? Apology? Aggravatingly, no particulars.

Finally, not a single mention of weapons. Not even a knife. Hell, not even a stick. (Frankly, that begins to be a bit foolhardy.)

Tellingly, law enforcement agents speak of Christopher in solicitous tones; these are not people given to the benefit of the doubt. And the fact that there has been no description of the arrest means it was undramatic. Apparently, officers just walked into Christopher's camp, cuffed him, and led him off to a cell.

But what stung me is the unhelpful and untruthful "analysis" in some press coverage. An otherwise objective Bangor Daily News article quotes one Todd Farchione, described as "a research assistant professor in the psychology department at Boston University", as literally saying that seclusion "stunts development." I got news for you, Todd: so does society. He goes on to say that Christopher's appreciation of talk radio "falls far short of personal interaction with others." Since that's also the lion's share of social interaction for many right-wingers, I guess they must be similarly "stunted".

But far his most arrogant statement is this:

“He [Christopher] might have knowledge, but he’s not going to know what it feels like to lose his first job or lose his first love, or make a mistake or suffer the pain that comes with living. He has not been living in many respects, not in a normal, socially acceptable way.”

Gizo H. Bodhisattva, where to start? Christopher doesn't know what it's like to make a mistake? Really? He doesn't know the pain of living? Out there alone, where the central nutrient of our existence, human kindness, is completely absent? But perhaps this is no problem, since he's "not been living in many respects". Farchione suggests that makes him so "socially unacceptable", he's no longer human.

Check it out, college boy: this hermit has a stick. And he's reaching for it.

Inevitably, Farchione refers to "schizoid personality disorder", which he defines as "a condition in which people lack the desire for social relationships". Yeah. The same thing is often caused by those relationships. There are plenty of sane reasons to avoid people. And unlike cultures in other times and places, this one provides no honest, sanctioned way for such renunciates to get by.

Fortunately, in the same article, Boston College psychology professor Joseph Tecce, (after a few more premature allusions to mental illness), offers a more accurate assessment of Christopher's situation. "He has not practiced the art of interacting with people," Tecce says. He suggests Christopher have a companion to sit with him as he faces the maelstrom of officialdom. "He’ll likely feel overwhelmed, and another person’s presence at his side could offer relief." That's helpful, insightful advice.

Eventually the truth will out. There will be a trial, followed by a book, and then perhaps, God forbid, a TV movie. We'll learn that Christopher's life as a recluse wasn't quite as we imagined, and that his backstory is more complex and more ambiguous than first reported. He'll become a cautionary tale about guys who live in the forest, and the righteousness of hounding them out of it again. This civilisation brooks no abstention, spiritual or otherwise.

What will not happen is any re-evaluation of the morality that Christopher found less attractive than a grinding life in the rough. In that he reminds me of the Vietnam War vets who took to the woods outside my hometown when I was a kid. Respectable folk feared and judged them, called them hippies, maniacs, and delinquents, and sometimes sent the police to hunt them down. (The first Rambo movie, filmed here on the North Coast, was inspired by those incidents.) That experience too produced no change in public morality: of war, of exploitation, of collective guilt, of anything else. Because if there's one thing The Consensus does well, it's lambasting every selfishness but its own.

I hope Christopher gets support from decent people, and that as the public learns the full texture of his tale, he bears up against the blowback. When it's all over, the Maine winter may not be the coldest thing he's survived.

UPDATE: Hermythology, a documentary about Christopher, is scheduled for release 17 July 2013. Further information is available here.

UPDATE, 15 September 2013: Christopher Knight has been sentenced under a provision that allows him to serve his time without incarceration, in a supervised programme. All things considered, a wise and sensitive decision. Details here.

UPDATE, January 2014: The Maine State Police Trooper who led the Christopher Knight investigation believes his story is accurate as told; mention of an alcohol addiction; and his reintegration is apparently going smoothly to date. Details here.

(View of the world from under a tarp courtesy of Flickr and a generous photographer.)

Good Movie: Smoke Signals

"There are some children who aren't really children at all; they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them. Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash."

With an opener like that, you'd be forgiven for assuming this all-Native production is a heavy social justice film.

Psych!

Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals is a modest miracle. Written by a Native, directed by a Native, starring Natives, it takes place in the present, a place where Natives are pointedly not welcome. (Take it from a Scot: The Man likes his tribals historical.) Yet for a' tha' it's a very sweet movie, wherein innocence is not so much lost, as worked into whatever comes next.

Thomas Builds-the-Fire (allegory intended) and Victor are frenemies from Idaho's Cœur d'Alêne reserve. Their destinies, like their pasts, are intricately intertwined, though they appear diametric opposites. Thomas is perennial odd man out: a fumbling nerd who seems to live in a world that's not there. Maybe he's a shaman. Maybe he's autistic. Could be he's both; each one of director Chris Eyre's scenes encode about twelve concurrent realities, any one of which is liable to surface at any time. And Thomas is his translator. He's the seer in Coke bottle glasses; the good son without parents; the helpless hero.

Meanwhile, Victor is too anchored in the physical, too distracted by hard-cold to understand how weak that can make you. To borrow Thomas's image, Victor is a pillar of fire, permanently glowering over iniquities by no means trivial, though compared to those of his congenitally happy companion they can seem so. Shackled together -- to Victor's enduring annoyance -- they will make a long, winding

journey, first through the lovingly-rendered homeland of their ancestors, and then the entire American West. (In a refreshing turnabout, the part of the Southwest is played by the Martian landscape of Washington's coulee country; just an hour and change west, it is in fact as different from the lush Palouse as Arizona.)

Throughout, rezgeist eddies and froths like the Spokane River. In the very first scene, a doomed couple hurl their newborn from a burning house, into the steady arms of a feckless drunk with the heart of a warrior. The power of that metaphor, and its accuracy, are breath-taking. And the beat goes on: basketball; frybread; mothers; fathers; automobiles; water; hair. The entire film crackles with aboriginal touchstones. You could write an MFA thesis on The Symbology of Sherman Alexie's "Smoke Signals". (Send me a link if you do.)

There's also a lot of (coincidental?) Zen in Eyres' world, where nothing is what it appears, yet everything is patently obvious if you can decide to see it. My favourite teaching: the boys voyage to the end of the earth with a jar of gold; come back with a jar of ashes. As Thomas points out, we all travel heavy with illusions.

But the greatest fun comes from the palpable glee with which director and writer lay waste to Hollywood "Indian" conventions. "Hey Victor!" says Thomas, "I'm sorry 'bout your dad." "How'd you hear about it?" Victor asks. "I heard it on the wind," says the spooky medicine-kid. "I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin'."

Later, having hitched a ride off-rez with two backward-driving contraries (another overlapping wink at First Nations tradition and politics), they're asked if they've got their passports. "But it's the United States," Thomas protests. "Damn right it is," says the driver. "That's as foreign as it gets." Anyone who has lived in a bush community will appreciate the sentiment. In fact, my own village once had a bootstrap radio station that broadcast traffic reports identical to those on KREZ: "Big truck just went by. Now it's gone."

The boys fall further down the highway, Thomas's old-school braids and pronounced aboriginal accent underscoring the sense of spacewalking, until they arrive at last… on another reserve. One that is simultaneously completely different from and exactly the same as the one they just left. (Cough*zen*cough.)

Canadian viewers will be forgiven for assuming Smoke Signals is one of ours; it's about aboriginals, and the cast is almost entirely Canadian. I guess that's both the good and the bad news. Good, because Evan Adams (a straight-up doctor in real life), and the more familiar Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, and Tantoo Cardinal, all act like they're not acting. And bad, because apparently there aren't enough experienced Native actors in the States to pull off such a film by themselves. Here's hoping that changes.

Also terrific is Tom Skerritt, whose sixty-odd screen seconds, as a weary, competent Arizona sheriff, would qualify him for token white guy, if the moment weren't one of the movie's most memorable.

And then there's Irene Bédard. Sigh. What can be said about this grossly under-signed actress that won't jeopardise one's monastic street cred? How about this: I esteem Ms. Bédard for her effortless performance, her deft, sensitive handling of a pivotal role, and her ability to imbue any scene with grace and immediacy. Contrary to rumour, my admiration of this accomplished thespian has nothing to do with the fact that she's, like, virulently beautiful, pulling down six to eight thousand millihelens on a grey Tuesday. I would further like to deny categorically that I originally watched this film, or any other of the every single ones she's ever made, just because she was in it.

The soundtrack here jacks up the property values as well. Most of it is the raw, powerful Colville musician Jim Boyd, singing lyrics by Alexie. A few others are chucked in for symmetry, notably the multi-layered Ulali masterpiece, All My Relations.

It may be true, as Thomas says, that "the only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians on TV", but this production goes a long way toward making the world a better place in the best possible way: by simply giving genius and insight a platform. I don't know if Alexie and Eyre knew this, but their movie isn't really about aboriginals at all. It's about humanity, all of us, as manifested in one of our ten thousand hoops. (And I was chaffin' you before; no way they didn't know.)

So in the end, the most moving thing about Smoke Signals is how aboriginal it's not. Alexie nails the thing in a final disclaimer at credits' end: "Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

Suicide: The Cause

(See also Suicide: The Cure.)

A former student of mine recently committed suicide. He was a truly exceptional young man, still in his college years, with a powerful soul that blazed a phosphorescent trail through his community and left a persistent retinal impression.

When I was a teacher there was much talk about suicide and how to prevent it. But I was amazed at the utter lack of insight into the core causes of suicide, and truly alarmed at the rank incompetence of official responses. Virtually all anti-suicide programmes for young people can be summed up by a poster I saw in a middle school counselling centre: a big yellow sun with a smiling cartoon character beneath, and the caption: "Life is beautiful! Don't throw it away!"

I wonder how many kids that poster killed.

For the record, people don't commit suicide because life sucks. They do it because people deny that life sucks. They're in pain, and everything they see and hear defines that as failure. Suicide is not an act of sadness or disillusionment; it's an act of loneliness and alienation.

The fact is, even concentrated individual treatment of suicidal persons is often embarrassingly nugatory. Know why? Because when it's over, we dump these unfashionably-perceptive people back into the same abusive, self-satisfied population that almost killed them in the first place.

So take a deep breath, brothers and sisters, because things are gonna get real.

It's not suicidal people who need treatment. It's you.

Your eternal War on Humans makes this life an unendurable hell. The practice of identifying humanity itself as weakness, and advancing shallow, half-baked ideologies, political, social, and religious, over decency, is deadly to human life.

When you brand someone a "felon" for life and deny her a job, a place to live, the vote, you fill this fishbowl with mustard gas. And it kills, liberally and indiscriminately. Because that's what mustard gas does.

When you meet poverty, sickness, and injustice with pat excuses, employ dehumanising rhetoric to smear their victims, preach and screech about this group and that group, value trophies over solutions and money over morality, you burn up all the oxygen in this Mason jar.

When you make an individual anathema, on any grounds, hold him up to ridicule, mock, bait, and blacklist him, you kill legions of faceless bystanders, though they be far removed from your victim-du-jour.

The suicide epidemic can't be addressed with the simplistic one-to-one arithmetic our plodding culture calls data. But whether or not the link can be easily demonstrated, every time you withhold basic dignity, respect, and forgiveness, you chop up the ties that connect us all. Fear and resentment and hopelessness drive the most human of us out of the herd, where they perish. And sometimes, every so often, what goes around comes home, and someone you love dies.

As for me, I wrote this world off a long time ago, and dedicated the remainder of my time here to transcending it. So today I am commemorating my brilliant young brother's life and death in accordance with my vows, by sitting sesshin on a small uninhabited island. In the course of this day I will perform acts of atonement, renew my commitment to the Dharma, and sit metta meditation for us all.

I'm inviting you personally to join me, by whatever path you walk. Please undertake the struggle to change your heart, and so change your species. Please find the courage to remain calm. Please abandon the wisdom of this world. Please cleave to truth.

And please stop being a mass-murderer.

So here's to you, brave Uncle Francis
When the snowflakes fall, I will sing the blues
And when I think on how you left this world
I will remember how the world left you

Michael Marra

Good Movie: Jeremiah Johnson

I've seen this movie so many times I could play all the parts, in French, English, Crow, and Flathead. The first time, we both had recently been released. That was the early Seventies, during the golden age of the New Western, when the likes of Little Big Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wrenched the franchise from the dime-store patriots. In its place we got a precarious, three-dimensional American West, where skin and hat colour meant nothing and no destiny was manifest. It's an evocative genre, and Jeremiah Johnson is one of its masterpieces. Today you can see it on barebones DVD, without any subtitles or supporting features, but the print isn't bad.

The title character, a traumatised war veteran, flees to a far corner of the Missouri Territory with the quaint notion that no white people means no people. A folk-style ballad, served up in bites, informs us that he was "bettin' on forgettin' all the troubles that he knew". As a Western kid, I've seen the type.

But the West was never free for the taking, and Johnson quickly learns its Three Noble Truths: outbacking is a lifetime apprenticeship; human problems exist wherever humans are; and the West is full of humans.

Specifically, it's full of its owners, the serious citizens of serious nations, complete with their own laws, languages, and lives. Such is director Sydney Pollack's grasp of this fact that not a single aboriginal is shown speaking English. (One Apsáalooke [Crow] chief apparently understands English, but refuses to speak it, according to Johnson's mentor Bear Claw, "just to aggravate me.") Instead, wonder of Hollywood wonders, you'll hear Apsáalooke, Séliš (Flathead), and Sao-kitapiiksi (Blackfoot) speaking their own tongues. The exception is one devoutly Christian Séliš chief, who speaks flawless French to a white man who can hardly mangle "bonjour".

None of this is subtitled, underscoring Johnson's status as a foreigner in a foreign land. Alienated from his own culture, he is immersed in several others he knows nothing about. And in this he is surprisingly successful, because despite his antisocial bent, he's truly not looking for trouble. But suffering is all around him, and as a decent man he quickly acquires all the attachments, and even the authority, he wants so desperately to escape.

True to his genre, Pollack tomahawks clichés right and left. A US cavalry officer, assigned a necessary, dangerous duty, seeks the path of least harm; one imagines Johnson was that kind of soldier. The aboriginals are sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and shrewd. And all the mountain men are crazy. Some criminally, some culturally, but all of them, down to our shell-shocked hero, have completely stripped their gears.

Pollack gets hermits. You don't choose this lifestyle. It's chosen for you.

The casting is a constant revelation. Robert Redford's circumspect, fight-or-flight silence is the spirit and image of Johnson. Will Geer's Depression-honed Bear Claw is utterly credible, while ebullient sociopath Del Gue ("with an E!") gives Stefan Gierasch a rare chance to flaunt his own under-appreciated gift. Most enigmatic is Delle Bolton. As the Séliš woman Swan, she incarnates her character's name, anchoring all her scenes despite the fact that she has no English lines. (And damn few Séliš).

The plot is only loosely based on actual events, but Pollack's obsession with historical accuracy gives it a ring of truth. The lore is authentic, as are the mishaps. Del tells Jeremiah the Séliš were converted by "the French", yet the chief's French is pointedly Canadian. Exact on both counts. And I don't want to spoil anything for first-time viewers, but there's an FAA navigational beacon on a Wyoming mountain called Crazy Woman. Details like these make Jeremiah Johnson one of the great movies.

In the end Johnson winds up in a place he never wanted to be, and I don't mean the Big Horn Mountains. He's no longer really white; he does what he does for aboriginal reasons, under aboriginal law. But he's not one of them, either. Perhaps he's a nation of one. Perhaps he's a deputy of Karma. Or maybe, as his enemies come to believe, he transcends humanity altogether.

Whatever the case, it's clear that the old saw is wrong. You can run from your problems. It's just that you'll be issued new ones when you get there.

Good Movie: The Truman Show

I recently watched this again, for the first time since it came out 'way back in 1998 CE. I liked it then; the cultural themes were timely and important, and the plot, performances, and cinematography were excellent.

Then it disappeared from cultural radar, and I seldom thought about it again. In the intervening years I became a monk, and The Truman Show became a completely different film.

The premise is simple enough: a production company builds a giant set, peoples it with actors and advertisers, and drops in a real baby. Hidden cameras then broadcast Truman Burbank's entire life, public and "private", and the resulting 24-hour soap opera becomes the highest-rated show on the planet. The prescience is eerie; reality TV at that time was still limited to MTV space-fillers, watched mainly by high school kids.

Imagine. Just thirteen years ago, the notion of mass media dominated by voyeurism was still dystopian.

When we come in, Truman is a twenty-something insurance agent, raised on a steady diet of fear: fear of the new, fear of risk, fear of the unknown. The news juxtaposes reports of distant tragedies with glowing accounts of the seamless perfection of Seahaven, Truman's island fishbowl. (American friends encouraged not to read too deeply into this.)

But the kid isn't happy. Sure, he smiles a lot. He's cheerful, funny, upbeat. But something's wrong. For one thing, Klieg lights occasionally crash to the sidewalk, almost killing him. And the media's explanation ("airplanes") only works if you want it to.

And that's just the beginning. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen the film, or haven't seen it recently, but anyone who's tasted alienation will relive Truman's travails: being forced to participate in advertisements for no apparent audience; the odd feeling, laughed down by one's peers, that choices are rigged off-screen; and the readiness of the world to break its own laws when convenient.

And the more insistently our hero questions all of this, the more desperately – even violently – he's smacked back into place.

Director Peter Weir's genius starts in the casting. I'm not an unreserved fan of Jim Carrey's trademark burlesque, but his Truman is so understated, so believable as a good-hearted schlemiel surrounded by users, that he quite won me over. He's just eccentric enough to be real – seekers are eccentric.

Ed Harris similarly nails Truman's "God," the intense, soft-spoken, beret-ed and bespectacled TV producer Christof. Self-important artistes are not Harris' stock in trade, but his grasp of this one is almost creepy. And Natascha McElhone, in a small but pivotal role, does one of the best jobs of playing an actual woman I've seen in a long time.

Like the main character in The Matrix, a film more deeply ingrained in the cultural zeitgeist, Truman is driven to confront a reality that is, if not exactly illusion, at least bowdlerised and rationalised to the point of absurdity. The great strength of Truman is that it delves into the process of coming to that epiphany, and the courage required to step beyond it.

In short, The Truman Show is great companionship for those of us who have been there, one that will keep you mulling and meditating its metaphors for months. (Not bad, eh? I just made that up.) Whether it will mean anything to others, I can't say, but at minimum it's a Feast of Good: good writing, good acting, and good directing.